About Patrick Michelangelo Lostracco
Patrick Michelangelo Lostracco is a Canadian poet, independent filmmaker, and self-produced recording artist. His writing has won awards in his hometown of Montreal, Canada, and his films have screened internationally. Prolific, multi-faceted, and dynamic, Lostracco is unapologetically relentless in his work, unraveling the suspensions of reality that syncopate with our senses. Most important to his practice is a deep understanding and connection with nature. Lostracco is a member of Contemporary Arts Museum Houston’s FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) Team, the Westmount Poetry Group, and is an alumnus of Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema (Austin, Texas).
About Alexis Pye
Alexis Pye is a painter that currently resides in Houston, Texas and is a recent graduate of the University of Houston’s undergraduate painting program. She uses the tradition of portraiture to unveil complex truths about the relationship between art history and race, exploring portraiture as a way to express the black body outside of its social constructs. She looks to her community to shadow these ideas by taking pictures and composing compositions that reflect melancholy emotion. This sense of melancholy alludes to the experiences of being black and having to face life’s blue moments and convert it into joy. Therefore changing the idea of the black body, from just a mere prop in painting, or larger than life character, but into a person who is in their environment and confident in their own skin. Alexis was born in Michigan and as a child dealt with alienation while she attended predominantly white schools. In her youth, her budding love for art grew deeper when her mother asked her a very simple question; “Why don’t you draw black people?”. This question changed her trajectory as an artist and threw her into a lifelong mission to answer that question; even when people of color have so much impact on culture, a little girl cannot see themselves in their media. Alexis uses family members, friends, and strangers as subject matter in portraits dealing with race. She also uses references from print and modern media to depict different identities in the diaspora. Alexis was selected as a 2018 Summer Studios and for Round 51: Local Impact II for Project Row Houses. She was selected for a group show of young artists at the David Shelton gallery for Everything’s Gonna be Alright, curated by Robert Hodge. She was also a part of the Texas Southern University Museum’s Citywide Exhibition, curated by the Museum of Fine Arts Houston’s Assistant Curator of Modern Art Kanitra Fletcher. In this exhibition, she won the Curator’s Choice certificate.